Broken Glass to Sweep Away
by Asidian
Summary: Pitch has discovered a way to regain his lost power. All he has to do is make sure that Jack's worst nightmares come true. Angst. Neglect. Starvation. Psychological torture.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Notes**: It occurred to me that I wanted to write about Jack's Worst Thing happening. ...so I did. And will. Still in progress; I'm expecting this to be maybe three parts. The title is taken from Robert Frost's "Birches," which always makes me cry.

* * *

Broken Glass to Sweep Away

* * *

"Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells  
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust -  
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away  
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen."

-Robert Frost, "Birches"

* * *

Jack awoke in darkness, and that was not unusual. On the nights with no moon, when only the stars stretched out overhead, distant and shining, he often woke this way, blanketed beneath the velvet black of the sky.

There were no stars above him, though, and for an instant the boy wondered if he had dreamed unsettling dreams, had conjured the dark clouds that portended a blizzard while he slept. It had happened before; it would, he suspected, happen again.

But the ground beneath him was empty of snow; nothing drifted down from above; no snowflakes heralded an impending storm.

Jack paused – frowned – squinted upward. Far, far above, he could just make out the faint lines of a high ceiling. Closer, as his eyes began to adjust, he saw that there were stripes, regular and even, through which the world appeared in swaths.

It was not until the boy reached out to touch them, hard metal slick with ice, that he realized they were bars. And it was not until he gave a shout of alarm and bolted upright that he was able to make out all the rest: the other cages swinging, empty, in the largest chamber of the Nightmare King's domain.

"Ah," came the voice, frighteningly near at hand. "Awake now? How good of you to join me."

"Pitch!" Jack scrabbled, half-blind, at the ground beneath him, searching frantically for the familiar presence of his staff. He touched only ice and metal; he touched the bars, pressing in on all sides of him.

"Looking for this?" In the gloom, he could just make out the crook of it clasped in an elegant, grey-skinned hand. "Come, now. Did you really think I'd leave it with you?"

He left off feeling his way by touch, gathered his legs beneath him to face the man head-on, instead. As he moved to stand, he felt the ground sway beneath him, a gentle rocking as the cage shifted on its chain. "What do you want?"

"Isn't it obvious?" There was a threat behind the words, but also amusement, rich and deep. "I _have_ already taken it, after all."

"Some plan." The boy ignored the way his heart hammered in his chest - told himself that it was anger and not fear. "You can't even use it."

"Not this trifle that you play with." Pitch turned the staff over in his hands, let it dangle as though it was of no consequence. As though the winter spirit was not eyeing it like a cornered animal eyes the exit. "I was referring to you, my dear boy."

"Me?" There was a moment of genuine surprise as Jack peered at his captor, attempting to make out enough of the man's expression to gauge it. His thoughts turned and tumbled, came together and pulled apart with nothing to show for it. After years of exclusion, of being ignored, his mind was not fast to provide a reason why someone might require him. "But I don't have anything else."

"Nonsense." The form of the man blurred, dissolved – and when the voice came again, it was much nearer his ear, so close that he could feel the warmth of breath. "You have the most important thing of all." The touch came without warning, uncomfortably hot fingers skirting the back of his neck. Jack jerked – gasped – spun around, hands up before him, to find nothing there. "Fear," said the voice, low and insinuating, and the chuckle that pealed from it was like a funeral bell.

"In case you didn't notice, I've got nothing to be afraid of." Jack lifted his chin and took a step back so that he could feel the icy bars of the cage behind him – so that there was no space remaining for anything else. "I wasn't scared of you before, and you're a lot less threatening hiding out in a hole in the ground."

"Do recall," said Pitch, voice echoing from some unidentifiable point above, "that you had your new-found friends with you at the time." The man pronounced the word "friends" as though it was the punch line to a witty joke, cruel humor at someone else's expense.

"Go on," Jack told him. "Laugh it up." The boy's eyes scanned the air, back and forth, wary and watchful – but already he could begin to feel the chill of dread replaced with the rush of anger. Already he could begin to feel himself believing what he had said: there was nothing to be afraid of here. "It won't be so funny when they show up looking for me."

"Such faith." The words were a purr drifting in the darkness. "Such earnestness. Do you truly think they'll come?"

"Of course they will." The answer was a reflex response, more fire than ice.

A quiet chuckle came again, disconcertingly hard to place. "Let's tally accounts, shall we?" Before the bars of the cage, a shape coalesced like oil beading on water, formed the outline of a man. "They hardly know you." In the face there were eyes, a menacing yellow. "For three hundred years, they did not so much as look on you. Did not speak to you. Scarcely acknowledged you existed." There were teeth in that face, as well, sharp and white. "And when at last they did glance your way, was repentance the cause? Did they pity the outcast?"

Jack was speaking already, was beginning a protest, but the man ignored it. His silhouette, black on black, shook its head. "Hardly. They needed you."

"You're wrong," the spirit of winter was saying, voice sharper perhaps than he had intended. If a thread of anxiety crept in beneath the indignation – if the words stirred something primally unsettled within the boy – it was only because three hundred years was such a very, very long time to be lonely.

"And now?" The man paused here, let the words gather weight. Let them grow heavy as a broken heart. "Oh, now, child… they don't need you any longer."

"You're _wrong_," Jack said again, louder this time – as though he could block out what he did not want to hear. "They wouldn't – they're not like that! They'll _come_!"

"Because they cherish your company so?" The smile closed over the teeth, but it was still a shark's expression, narrow and dangerous. "I think not." One elegant hand swept from side to side, as though brushing the words away. "But reasoned debate is unlikely, I think, to sway your mind. Only time can manage that."

When the figure faded from view, it was a gradual dispersion, like smoke drifting too high in the sky or like shadows cast by the moonlight. "How convenient for the both of us that we have plenty to spare."


	2. Chapter 2

Author's Notes: This fic is eating my brain. I must get it out. ._.

* * *

**Broken Glass to Sweep Away- Chapter 2**

* * *

"May no fate willfully misunderstand me  
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away  
Not to return."

-Robert Frost, "Birches"

* * *

The Guardians did not come, and it was stifling here, below the earth – suffocating without the chill of the winter air. All around him, blackness pressed like a live thing, shifting and creeping nearer each time he looked away. It was his imagination; this Jack knew with near certainty. This was the realm of the boogeyman, of things unseen from the corner of your eye. There was nothing to fear here but fear itself.

They did not come, and he searched for a way out, coaxed what ice he could conjure without the staff from his fingers, until the cage's bottom was slippery with it. He broke off crystalline chunks, held them in fingers that did not feel the cold, groped in darkness for a lock and inserted icicle after icicle, makeshift picks that did not do their job.

They did not come, and Jack paced in the tiny space like a caged animal, two steps down and two back, feeling the ground shift beneath him as the cage spun on its chain. The words of the Nightmare King clung to his thoughts, as restless as the winter spirit himself, equally as trapped. They would not leave him, would not retract the tendrils of doubt planted so expertly where intended.

They did not come, and the boy grasped the bars in his hands and pulled, and pulled, and _pulled_, leaning all his weight upon them. He pressed against them, slid his arm through to the shoulder and strained, for he was slight of build, and perhaps he might slip between them and be free. His skin grew red and raw; his palms chafed and bled with the effort, and still he was no closer to a way out.

They did not come, and time was hard to fathom in this place without light, but Jack began to feel it all the same, in the gnawing persistence of hunger and the ache of muscles without space enough to stretch. He broke icicles from the cage's roof to sate his thirst, sucked them absently and stared into the shifting shadows. The silence was hard to bear for a boy such as him, so used to the whirlwind of excitement that forms a child's life.

Jack waited. And he waited. And still they did not come.

When at last the voice spoke from behind him, its smooth calm a brilliant shock after hearing nothing for so long, the spirit of winter startled and whirled to face it, discovered a watchful face with eyes that glowed like a bonfire burned to coals. "Have you begun to reconsider?"

Pitch stood on nothing at all – or perhaps there was a ledge so swathed in shadow that it remained invisible to even Jack's eyes, now long accustomed to the darkness of the chamber.

"The only thing I'm considering," the boy told him, defiance welling up to chase away the uncertainty gathered in the corners of his thoughts, "is what I'm going to do with you when I get out of here."

"Brave words." The Nightmare King did not react; the smile, thin-lipped and self-satisfied, did not waver. "But not, I think, the truth. Have you forgotten so soon?" The man tipped his head to one side, as though considering a work of art he intended to purchase. "I know your fears."

Jack folded his arms over his chest, the gesture as much unease as belligerence. "If you knew what I was afraid of, you know I can't _be_ afraid of it anymore."

Pitch sighed the sort of sigh favored by a man attempting to explain a lesson to a particularly dull child. "The beauty of fear is that it's never a static thing," the Nightmare King told him. "It evolves. It changes, in time, to become something that it never was before."

The boy's hands were not loose now, but knotted into fists; the impulse was to move, to escape this conversation by leaving it, but the cage prevented any retreat.

"Oh, I know." The tone had grown indulgent – almost fond. "You think your problems solved. You think you have everything you've ever longed for." What hid behind those words might almost have been mistaken for concern, if it wasn't for the laughter that danced, unvoiced, beneath them. "Did you enjoy it? I must say, it didn't last for very long." In the dimness of the room, it was just possible to make out the careless way that Pitch raised one hand, as though shrugging something aside. "A handful of months, for all those centuries spent waiting."

"It's not over yet." Jack's voice was hoarse when he spoke, was tight with emotion. He could not hide the little sparks of dread beginning to shiver down his spine – not from Pitch - but he could pretend. Could put on a show of anger, as though the man might be convinced.

The Nightmare King paused, turning to face him. "You'll only prolong the inevitable if you tell yourself lies, child." It was not entirely certain in the gloom, but Jack thought the man's expression made a mockery of sympathy. "In the end, it hurts all the more."

"Right." The spirit of winter scowled – unfolded his arms so that he could clasp the bars of the cage in his hands. "Like you care how I feel."

Pitch's laughter was a thing of complicated secrets, of shades within shades. "All this time, and you've yet to discern my intentions? How you feel, my dear child, is all I care about." There must have been a ledge after all, for in the places that Jack had thought only empty air, the man passed like a ship on still, dark water - silent and graceful. "I'm afraid your friends did quite a bit of damage to me with that little stunt of theirs. My options, you understand, are somewhat limited."

The boy watched him approach, listened for each even footstep as it fell. "So you need more fear."

"Yours, to be direct." Jack had not looked away – had scarcely taken the time to blink – and yet when he opened his eyes, there was Pitch, close enough to touch him. The man's teeth were white and sharp, the pale of them drawing the eye in the dim light. "And how convenient it is that you already believe in me."

"Some good that does you." The winter spirit lifted his chin and set his jaw, threw the words out like a challenge. And if he recoiled just a little at Pitch's sudden proximity, it was, given the circumstances, understandable. "I'm a Guardian, remember?"

"As it so happens, you're also a child." The Nightmare King's smile grew just a touch wider - showed just a touch more teeth. As though drawn by the tiny retreat, he leaned in nearer. "And while your fear is not quite as delectable as a human's… well. One mustn't quibble over seasoning in the face of starvation."

"So what - you're just going to keep me?" The winter spirit forced a laugh, but it was a brittle thing, swallowed up in the long shadows of the cavern. "That's the big plan? Hold onto me until you can make trouble again?"

A knowing look sifted into eyes that glowed like lanterns. "Oh, I intend far more than that."

Jack snorted in disbelief, shook his head as though the motion could ward the idea away. "If you had something better lined up, you'd have started it already."

"Are you so sure I haven't?" Pitch paused, allowed the words to simmer. "Picture, if you will, a child. The poor dear is _breathtakingly_ lonely. Perpetually excluded." The stare that settled upon Jack was like the jagged edges of ice on a pond long, long ago. "For a few kind words or a simple embrace, he would lay bare his heart – would do anything to please. But he's never been given the chance."

The boy could feel that stare around his heart, closing in with the deadly creep of frost in a garden's roots. "Stop."

"In fact, he's been all but invisible." It might have been kindness, on any face save this one. It might have been pity, but for the way the man's lips still curled up at the corners. "Even the ones who _could_ see him never glanced his way."

"Stop it." The fingers clenched tight around the bars loosened their hold, began instinctually to draw away.

"Has it been everything you dreamed of, Jack? To be touched?" The boy was pulling away, now – saw where this would go – but he was not quite fast enough. With all the grace of a striking snake, Pitch stretched out a hand to reach inside, traced the planes of a pale cheek with surprising gentleness. "To be spoken to? Believed in?"

No answer came, but the Nightmare King had not expected one. He could feel it well enough, the emotion that roiled in the wiry frame before him, threatening to spill forth. "I-" Jack began, but he got no further. If his voice had been rough before, had been suspiciously tight, now it was frayed at the edges, coming undone.

"You think yourself immune to me. Is that it?" Pitch's thumb traced the ridge of a jaw, smoothed over the freckles that dusted Jack's cheek. "How frightfully brave of you, when I can snatch away everything you've ever wanted. How tragically _heroic_." The hand drifted slowly upward, over temples and forehead, to slip into hair as white as the snow the boy so reveled in. It hovered, then stroked the way one might comfort a child after a nightmare. "Do you know how easy it would be? To leave you here, alone in the dark, while your fair-weather friends enjoy the absence of you?"

The boy had begun to tremble. Just slightly, but words have power, and these had worked their way inside. They pulled down the pillars of hope; they rendered the contentment that had begun to bloom there, in these past few months, to a quivering ruin.

"I'll be here, of course," Pitch told him, as he petted the child's hair, "but it's not truly all you've feared unless the isolation is complete." As though driven by the revelation, the elegant fingers withdrew. The Nightmare King took back his hand – pulled it out through the bars of the cage once more. "With no one to even glance your way." The smile, for all its mildness, was horrific to behold. "Just like old times."

Oh, yes – words have power. And these had bowed the child's head, had driven the shaking in his shoulders to a visible affair. Jack's face was a study in emotion, always; he did not disguise his joys nor his sorrows, and now his expression was so much shattered glass, the breaking of his heart writ large in the damp lashes and reddened eyes.

Merciless, the boogeyman closed for the final blow. "And in eighty years or so, when the last of the children you so love have turned old and grey? You'll die when they do. Here in the dark, with nobody to care." There was something self-satisfied about the smirk that graced the Nightmare King's lips. "They told you, I hope, the perks of being a Guardian?"

No response came. In the silence, Jack heaved in an unsteady breath that sounded suspiciously like a sob.

"It's your last chance, Jack." Pitch had half-turned already, as though he meant to walk away. "Speak, if you would have one final farewell. After this, I'm afraid, there won't be anyone to answer."

The boy took another shaking breath – and this time, Pitch thought, there was no mistaking it for anything but what it was. Jack raised his head to glare at his captor, and there were tears frozen slick and glossy on his cheeks. "When they come for me," he said, "I'm going to laugh in your face."

"Oh no, child." The boogeyman began to walk, steps even and measured as before, back into the darkness from whence he'd come. _"If_ they come for you."


	3. Chapter 3

Author's Notes: Thank you guys so, so much for all of the comments. The response to this fic has just been amazing.

I am still deciding whether or not this will be the last chapter, actually. It depends on whether or not I decide I want to go ahead with the rest of what I have planned, basically, or if I end up convincing myself that this is a better stopping point.

* * *

**Broken Glass to Sweep Away- Chapter 3**

* * *

"They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load  
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed  
So low for long, they never right themselves."  
-Robert Frost, "Birches"

* * *

Jack had never known any place more completely than this one. He knew the whole of it: the ridges in the ice-crusted metal beneath him and the way the cavern extended far beyond sight, its ceiling hidden in shadow. He knew the way the darkness danced when you did not look at it directly, movement that was never quite there. He knew the shapes of the cages that dangled in the stillness, their lines like saplings half-obscured by a chill morning's mist.

But more than all of that, Jack knew the silence. He knew the ache of it that grew inside like a bruise until he spoke just to be rid of it, his own voice and no other, rising in fits and starts into the stillness. He knew the ring of it in his ears, a hush not unlike the way fresh snow muffled the sounds of the world. He knew the words that he repeated to himself to break it, a desperate search for conviction: "They're coming. They _are_."

Occasionally, he caught a glimpse of Pitch walking past far below, a black shape in a world that had become only blackness. The Nightmare King, true to his word, did not so much as glance Jack's way.

* * *

Food became a fascination, long taken for granted but sorely missed, now that it was gone.

Jack was a creature of impulse – had become accustomed to helping himself to what he wanted when he wanted it, for with none to see him, there had been no one to protest. The boy had snitched pies from windowsills, pocketed roast chestnuts from street stalls, filched loaves of bread from unobservant shoppers that turned too long from their purchases.

He had delighted in the food he took in much the same way he delighted in the chaotic whirl of a perfect day's sledding: it had drawn him closer to the people he watched over. Amid a vast collection of things he could not do, Jack had been able to share in this one, at least.

Now, when most he needed simple comforts, this too was denied him. He grew no thinner, showed no ill effects, but he found that the creeping hold of hunger settled upon him all the same. In Jack's spare moments – and there were many - he found himself thinking of his mother's lamb stew, so recently remembered. He found himself recalling that North had offered him fruitcake, once upon a time.

It seemed unthinkable to him now that he had refused.

* * *

Below him there were footsteps, and Jack roused himself from where he slumped against the side of the cage. He ached from being immobile for so long, but for the first time in – weeks? months? – a surge of conviction blazed through him. He seized the bars and dragged himself shakily to his feet, clenched them so tightly that his knuckles ached.

"Hey!" the boy called. "Hey, Pitch!" The effort hurt his throat; it had been a long time since he had last spoken to anyone but himself, longer still since he had needed to raise his voice above a whisper.

The footsteps did not slow. They did not even waver, and Jack felt something very like panic grip him. "Wait," he called. "_Wait_ – just look-"

But Pitch was gone.

* * *

The boy ran the tips of his fingers over the ice, and he remembered drawing swirls of frost on window panes as though it was a dream from a distant life. He remembered leaving icicles like shining crystal hanging from the eaves - the way a snowball felt in his hands, packed and ready. He remembered the icy surface of a pond slick beneath bare feet, the way the wind rushed past his ears as he slipped across the ice, careless and free.

On snow days, the children had shrieked and laughed. The world had been alive with the crump of snow beneath their boots; the air had steamed with their breath.

One night, in a child's darkened room, he had brought a creature all of cold to life. He had called the snow where snow should not be, white and soft, dancing slowly downward. Jaime's face, eyes alight and mouth open, was the most beautiful thing Jack had ever seen. His voice, speaking Jack's name, was a benediction.

The winter spirit had thought he knew joy before that moment, but what flared then, hot and bright as the sun inside him, had eclipsed it all. The words of that little boy had been everything to him, everything he'd ever wanted. The world had been set at his feet, full of a glimmering hope he had never known.

Looking back, tears frozen into tracts that he no longer bothered to scrape away, it seemed now a child's fancy – impossibly perfect.

* * *

He told himself stories the way he recalled once having spun fairytales for his sister. The Guardians were delayed, he assured himself, because they could not find the entrance to the boogeyman's lair. They were delayed because Pitch had begun a new campaign against the children of the world. They were delayed because boys and girls lost teeth every night, and hundreds of thousands of eggs were needed each Easter, and there were elves to keep from trouble. They were delayed—but they were _coming_.

Belief, Jack had always known, was a powerful thing. It was, perhaps, the _most_ powerful thing - and bit by bit, his slipped away. What had begun as conviction became riddled with slivers of doubt, and like an open wound left too long without care, the infection spread.

The Guardians had not come, his mind whispered, because they were not looking.

They had not come because he was not missed.

Perhaps North had wondered why this year's Christmas was not white. Perhaps Bunny had enjoyed the unseasonably warm weather. But if it had crossed their minds to search for the boy that brought the winter, they had not acted on it. In their busy lives, he was nothing worth noting – nothing worth fighting for.

The Nightmare King's words burned like acid when he thought too hard about them. They wormed their way into the stories he told himself, and the standards for a happy ending were whittled down, piece by piece. Daydreams of a rescue flickered and faded. The things he whispered to himself in the dark to keep up hope were adjusted by degrees.

He could not promise himself that the Guardians were coming. He could not promise that they had wanted him at all. Instead, Jack told himself that they had felt his absence, if only in small ways. He told himself that they had perhaps spoken of him, once or twice.

He told himself that this was enough.

* * *

The footsteps came, and Jack lurched and staggered, grasped the cage and hauled himself, with effort, to his feet. His strength had gone; his limbs shook, now, when he extended himself too far.

"Pitch!" His voice was a bird with a broken wing, weak and erratic. "Wait!" But there was no change in the pace of the footfalls below. He could just make out the man's form gliding through the shadows, stately and unaffected.

"Wait!" the spirit of winter called again, and he shook the bars with all the strength that remained him. A shuddering breath hitched in. "You were right. Please don't – _please_."

The Nightmare King reached the archway that led from the chamber, and Jack heaved in another breath. "They're not _coming_!" he wailed.

It hung in the air like the perfect, crystalline moment of sunrise on an icy morning. It pierced the stillness like spun glass breaking. And the boogeyman, rapture upon rapture, stopped.

"You were right," Jack sobbed, collapsing in relief to his knees. He did not want to close his eyes – did not want to risk that when he opened them, Pitch would be gone.

"You were right," he said again, earnest and broken, scarcely coherent. The thought that the man might be listening to him filled Jack with a gratitude so vast that he felt he would not be able to breathe.

But Pitch did not reply. He was fading from view, melting away like a nightmare in the morning's light.

"No," Jack gasped. "Please – I can't -" The boy's mind reeled in horror; in desperation, he forced one arm through the bars as far as it would go. He reached until his muscles burned with the effort and the skin of his shoulder, flush against the metal, began to bruise. "Pitch!"

There was panic in his voice; terror thrummed through his body like a breaking storm. "_Pitch_!"

No answer came. All around, the stillness of the cavern pressed in on him. It pounded in his ears, clutched at his chest, rose like the bile in the back of his throat.

Alone in the dark, Jack screamed until his voice gave out.

* * *

In time the spirit of winter did not rise anymore, when the boogeyman passed beneath him. He lay curled upon the bottom of his cage, and he listened to the footsteps, and he did not wonder whether they would stop.

He did not beg the Nightmare King to look at him. Did not cry and plead and bargain. Did not entreat him, "Just _once_."


	4. Chapter 4

Author's Notes: Thank you for all of the kind comments. I decided to go ahead and do one final chapter, after all - but this is officially the end. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. By which I mean I am a horrible person.

* * *

**Broken Glass to Sweep Away- Chapter 4**

* * *

"So was I once myself a swinger of birches.  
And so I dream of going back to be."  
-Robert Frost, "Birches"

* * *

Time. Time was like the foundation of the earth, fixed and immobile. Time was not a thing that came in increments; it was not a thing marked by the passing of days.

It was a relic of the world above, with all its little pleasures. It was a remnant of the life he had left behind. He did not need it any longer – did not count it as it slipped away - but if he had learned that he'd spent decades here, far from light and joy and freedom, he would not have been surprised.

Time was nothing. It was darkness – and silence – and the measured rasp of his own breathing.

Sometimes, far below, someone walked. Jack recalled distantly that he had wanted those footsteps to stop, that he had begged for them to stop, that he had screamed into the cavern until it rang with his voice.

The thought that he could affect such a change– that he might actually be listened to – seemed wishful and extravagant now, a child's dream of grandeur.

* * *

"I did warn you." The words hung frozen in his ears, bright as the first bird song after a long, desolate winter. They traveled through his body like a physical sensation, left shockwaves in his chest and up his spine. Hope had not visited this place in years – and the rush as it tried to flood back in, all at once, was so sudden that it hurt. He felt like a fish hook was lodged in his heart, trying to draw it forth.

Jack's throat worked as he swallowed. From the place where he lay curled upon the cage's icy bottom, he told himself that this, too, was a creation of his mind. Like the dreams in which he sometimes still imagined better things, this too would pass.

Don't, he told himself, as firmly as he was able. Just don't.

Jack felt his lips form the words soundlessly, willed obedience from his traitor thoughts. If he could grasp hold of his own expectations – if he could quash any presumptions before they were formed – then when hope was gone its loss would not be quite so great.

He might even have succeeded, had the touch not come - a pinpoint of blinding warmth upon his cheek.

The unexpected delight of contact drew a noise from him: choked and startled, as though in pain. Jack's hand scrabbled blindly toward it, and his fingers closed hard on what they found, spurred on by convulsive yearning. For the first time in far too long, there was a possibility that the mindless sameness had been replaced by something new.

Jack opened his eyes to discover a level yellow gaze regarding him from just beyond the bars. The thing clasped in his hand, solid and real, was the Nightmare King's wrist – and the touch he had felt was the brush of the man's fingertips, soft and inquisitive against his cheek.

The world swayed, as though it were an unsteady thing. For an instant, the corners of Jack's vision swam and threatened to slip away, the sudden shock near overwhelming.

"Pitch?" the boy asked, voice strange and soft, barely audible. The fingers were still on him, throbbing in time with his heartbeat – warm, warm, _warm_ – and he was not ashamed that he leaned into it, hoarding the sensation in the way that a man too long starved will ever after hoarde food.

He did not notice the cut beneath the Nightmare King's left eye. He did not mark the man's ragged appearance, as though a fight recently waged had been lost. There was a time when Jack would have made note of such details. There was a time when the spirit of winter would have leaped upon them as proof that the Guardians still searched for him - but that time had long passed.

"Were you expecting someone else?" Pitch asked by way of reply, tone smooth and dark, pointedly smug. "How touching. Even after all this time."

Jack could not meet that searching stare. What had once been the razor-sharp burn of betrayal had lessened – had faded to something that ached in the way of a bone broken long ago rather than the agony of a fresh wound. It had not left him, though, not entirely, and the reminder rekindled something very like regret. "No," the boy managed. "I wasn't expecting…"

"Anyone?" The hand on Jack's face shifted slightly, traced the skin along his jaw. It drew a quiet gasp from the winter spirit, whose hands instinctively reached to keep it there, tightened their hold, struggled to prevent this unexpected pleasure from vanishing. "Oh, I know. It's been a long time since you feared they wouldn't come." The thumb found the ridge of a pale cheekbone, dusted across the freckles spattered there. "Now you know for sure."

Jack searched the man's face, questioning at first – and then, gradually, almost pleading. "But you left me here anyway." To be kept here, suspended in darkness and solitude, had been torture. To be kept without _reason_ threatened a new horror. Jack had not known that there was a further depth to which he might sink, but he felt his stomach plummet as though in free-fall, dizzied by the notion that he was not needed even by the one who had taken him.

"I did," Pitch agreed, tone incongruously soft. He stroked Jack's face absently, off-handedly, as though his words and touch were not tearing apart what little remained intact.

"Are you-" said Jack, and when he swallowed, his throat made a strange clicking sound. "Are you going to stay? For very long?" His fingers, curled around the Nightmare King's wrist, were white-knuckled for the sudden, driving terror that the man would pull away.

"No," Pitch told him, and his smile widened when the boy whined softly in panic. "But don't worry. If you're _very_ lucky, I might come back." The man's long fingers drifted upward, carded through hair that was matted with long confinement. "Would you like that?"

"Please," Jack whispered. "Please, please – don't go." He took in a sobbing breath. It had been a long time since last he'd cried, but the tears came now, sudden and stinging, sharp as broken glass. "Don't go. I'll do anything."

"Hmm. Tempting." The hand was pulling away. The hand was _pulling away_, and Jack clenched his grip down tighter, screamed a denial, clung and clung – and found himself holding empty air. The Nightmare King stood beyond the cage, well out of reach.

"But not quite tempting enough." Pitch smiled, a condescending, pitying sort of smile.

He left as Jack still struggled to speak, unable to form words for the wretched, hitching sobs that shook him.

* * *

He had forgotten.

He had forgotten what the crush of hope could do, that momentous feeling that could not be suppressed or controlled or denied. He had forgotten how it left gouges in him, stole the breath from his lungs. He had forgotten the way it felt when it began to slip away, as though paring off pieces of his heart.

But most of all, he had forgotten the simple joy of another's touch. And now that he remembered, how he _wanted_.

* * *

"Do try not to get too excited," said the Nightmare King, voice swimming up out of the darkness, velvet and rot. "I can't stay long."

Before Jack's mind could begin to process, his body was reacting – was dragging him awkwardly to his knees – was reaching through the bars, seeking the source of the words. Instead of a wrist, however, his fingers closed upon a thick, grey mug, pressed carelessly into his hands. Pitch was smiling again, that same almost-kind smile that held much darker promises beneath. "I thought you might like a little something," the man said, as though it was a thought that had only just occurred to him. "Are you hungry?"

Jack stared blankly at the object clasped between his palms – faintly warm, still, though the heat was being quickly leeched away, drained by contact with his skin. It was filled to the brim with liquid, color indistinguishable in the dim lighting, but he could smell it, a rich, meaty aroma that made his stomach clench in response. The scent was demanding, was hypnotically good, and Jack cradled the cup like an infant, so very carefully, as he maneuvered the mug through the bars to bring it to his lips.

It was some sort of broth, but his mind refused to process more than that. Coherent thought had gotten somewhat lost in the fact that it exploded across his tongue – that it was savory and visceral and _good_ – and that he needed it, all of it, right now.

"Calm down, child," Pith advised, when half of it had gone in two long swallows. "It's not as though I intend to take it back."

The idea had not even occurred to the boy. It had not crossed his mind. But it did now, and with it came the sudden fear that Pitch would do exactly that. The spirit of winter drew away, shoulders hunched and eyes watchful. He curled around the mug like it was something to keep safe, and the Nightmare King laughed softly at the sight.

"No trust at all. You wound me." The man reached between the bars, ignored the flinch as Jack prepared for his gift to be stolen away, and instead set a hand upon the boy's back to rub soothingly. "Go on," he said. "Finish it."

It was almost too much. Too much all at once, the glorious warmth of fingertips on his back and the flood of simple pleasure that came with each sip. He was shaking, and he found that he couldn't stop. It was as though a wedge had been driven through him and was breaking him slowly apart, forcing wide parts he'd struggled to keep closed.

But it did not last; sooner than he had hoped, Jack tipped the mug back and discovered that nothing was left inside. The boy did not hesitate, slipping his fingers in to trace the corners, licking at them to savor the last of what remained.

This, too, the boogeyman watched with a knowing smile, with that expression that might almost pass for sympathetic. He extended a hand to collect the mug. "Was it good?" he asked, fondly.

Jack ignored the outstretched hand - dipped his fingers again, licked at them. "Yeah." He was reluctant to give up the cup. "Really good."

Pitch flexed his fingers. They remained open, waiting. "Would you like some more?"

The boy's head jerked up; he felt his mouth fall open; within him, hope laid waste to his heart like a winter storm. "I – _can_ I?"

"You can." Long fingers closed around the mug's handle, worked it free from Jack's grip with surprising tenderness. The Nightmare King flicked his wrist and let the cup fall, but before it hit the floor, it was swallowed in shadows, vanishing into the gloom. "And maybe you will. That depends on you."

It was a staggering concept, that something might depend upon him. That something might involve him at all. "On me?"

"That's right." Pitch cupped the boy's face in both hands, as though sheltering something fragile. "On whether you meant what you said." Jack shuddered, marveling in the sensation. It was bliss. It was wonder. It was all he'd ever wanted, and he soaked it in, already dreading that it would soon be gone. "After all, 'anything' is such a strong word."

* * *

The world was too bright for his eyes, glaring sun on blinding snow, and the wind whipped about him, caught in his hair and stung his cheeks and sent flurries of snowflakes twirling past. Before him, the mountain met the sky, white on pale blue, and the sight was beautiful. He could not stop staring – could not stop the way his eyes welled up, tears freezing at the corners. In Jack's hands, the staff was an unaccustomed weight, familiar and strange both at once.

"Now, remember," said the boogeyman's voice beside him. "There might be another little excursion in the future." A touch ghosted against his shoulder, fleeting and faint, enough to remind the boy of what he stood to lose. "But only if you do a _very_ good job."

Above the pale outline of the mountain, a tiny black dot appeared; as it grew nearer, it shifted slowly to red.

"And Jack," said the Nightmare King. "If you're thinking about anything stupid… do recall how much assistance they'll be when I take you back." This time, there was nothing kind about the smile that graced Pitch's lips. It was a show of teeth, hard and unforgiving. "And I _will_ take you back."

Jack could just make out the reindeer now, legs kicking. He could see the figures in the sleigh, too far away for expressions to be visible. Too far away for him to search their faces for some hint as to what he had done so terribly wrong.

His throat ached, and his eyes stung, and all around him the day was impossibly bright, impossibly inviting. He had loved them once, a long time ago. He had craved their affection blindly, with the awkward desperation of a child bereft of family.

And it was not their fault, in the end. Not truly. They had done nothing but ignore him for centuries; it had not been fair to expect them to care in the first place, after he'd offered so little assistance with which to buy their loyalty.

It was not their fault, in the end – not when the expectation had only ever been his. His mistake. His unrealistic dream.

Jack wanted to believe that they would understand. He wanted to tell himself that, had they known the darkened chamber with the hanging cages, they would forgive him.

But the boy had misjudged the Guardians once before. And since then, Jack had learned a few lessons about holding out for hope.


End file.
